


the mind, a bright beacon

by dalishluthien



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Bull is good at helping with panic attacks, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Elven endearments, Helpful Cole (Dragon Age), M/M, Mahon is good at repressing shit, Questionably Helpful Cole, The Storm Coast, is there a tag for general horniness, solas hates tea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 16:29:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalishluthien/pseuds/dalishluthien
Summary: A collection of short, Cole-inspired moments between the Inquisitor and his companions; ranging from sweet to embarrassingly silly to upsetting.Will update as I write more!





	1. Field Dressing

"Blood," Cole says in an awestruck sort of way, his eyes locked on Mahon's hands - which are clean of any red - as the elf breaks himself off a piece of dry jerky. Mahon startles.

"But it's not bad or hurting. A clean bleeding from a clean arrow wound, a whispered prayer, _Andruil i Falon'Din ma serannas_ , a white knife gutting the body, elbow drenched in blood but _clean_. Purpose fulfilled." The spirit boy's voice wavers upwards like he's posing a question.

The half-chewed jerky is tasteless on Mahon’s tongue. He swallows the mouthful and looks at Cole, hands itching for his bow at the memory he pulled from him; he looks unsure.

"Field dressing." He mutters in explanation, then stands and stretches. The party had passed two scouts hastily dressing a ram just downwind of the camp, and Mahon had felt an odd stab of annoyance, or envy, at the sight. He couldn't make sense of it and had hurried past. "An elf becomes an adult when they can hunt and clean and honour a kill on their own." Mahon tries to smile at him, but feels a twist of something meek in his gut.

"Oh," Cole breathes, understanding blooming across his face. "Homesick." He declares quietly, and Mahon's smile softens into something genuine.

"I think that's exactly it, Cole." He sighs and makes to help the scouts at their task, loosening his bone dagger in its sheath as he walks. _Homesick_.

This is one way he can lighten the weight of it; his deft hands and keen eyes skinning and cleaning and using the ram offered to him, the scouts falling back like _da'len_ to watch him. It's familiar.

 


	2. Honey-sweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mahon thinks a little too loudly about missing Dorian. Lots of snort-laughing ensues.

Over unsweetened pine and lavender tea with four days of travel still between him and Skyhold, the Inquisitor misses Dorian. It's not the mournful ache of loneliness, but the persistent anxiety that anticipation inspires. Cole is drawn to it like a bee to a flower, and he watches intently as Mahon sips the bitter tea. The elf thinks of warm skin, smooth and tan and the colour of honey.

"Sweet," Cole says suddenly from his seat away from the fire. Mahon glances at him in alarm, and Varric snorts into his cup.

"I wish, kid." Then he downs the rest of his tea with a pained expression. Solas is peering into his mug as if willpower alone will improve its taste.  
  
Mahon rolls a pine needle on his tongue, looks away from Cole and frantically tries to banish Dorian from his thoughts. Too late.

"Honey," He continues, and Varric is about to make another mournful quip about the tea until he realizes that Cole is, in fact, reading a part of the Inquisitor.

"Oh, this one should be fun," He says instead, taking on the same tone he has when dealing cards for wicked grace. Mahon clears his throat in protest. Solas has affixed his gaze to Cole's hunched form.

"Warm and smooth," Cole says, louder, emboldened by Varric's support, meeting Mahon's eyes with his faraway-blue ones. "Golden, thick, heady and heavy, a taste that's still new every time-" He's picking up speed, and Mahon is cursing whatever force taught Cole to put just enough emphasis on just the _right_ words to make them sound so, so suggestive.

"Cole," Mahon warns, and Varric is shaking his head and grinning, and Solas has instead decided to observe the Inquisitor's rapidly reddening face. Mahon tries to think of giant spider webs or frostbite or saddle sores or a bear, but all his mind offers him is the dimple in Dorian's right cheek when he smiles just so; how warm he looks under candlelight. He takes a swig of hot tea and glares at the spirit over the rim of his cup.

" _Ma haurasha_ ," Cole blurts in a breathless rush, and Mahon chokes irrecoverably on his tea, drops the cup into the grass at his feet. He doesn't see Varric's confused raised eyebrow because he promptly hides his face behind his hands - but he does hear the burst of affronted laughter that Solas fails to stifle, even as he's still spluttering to himself.

"What?" Varric is trying not to laugh. "I don't speak elf, what am I missing?"

"His honey, his sweetness, _he_ makes him-" Cole, ever helpful, attempts to translate for the dwarf.

" _Cole_ ," Mahon barks, clasping his hands tightly in his lap. "I don't need you to divulge the dark secrets that are Elven endearments to the whole camp." Varric makes a dejected, defeated sound. Solas laughs warmly.

"A fitting endearment for the object of your affections, Inquisitor." Solas' grey eyes spark mischievously, and the Inquisitor allows himself a shaky smile.

"I thought so. And now I shall never use it again. Thank you, Cole." A tiny edge of sarcasm colours his words.

"I'm glad I could help," the spirit says, and the relieved glee in his voice is so bare and honest that Mahon forgives him immediately and completely.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> translation: Ma haurasha, my honey; you make me hard.


	3. Remembered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An encounter on the Storm Coast unbalances years of keenly repressed trauma. In which Cole is more of a direct receiver of an overflowing mind than a helpful spirit.
> 
> Warnings for describing a panic attack, and for violence in the context of a slaver ambush (flashback).

Mahon tastes salt and lightning as he trudges uphill, seeking dryer land. He hears the crunch of gravel under The Iron Bull's boots, hears the whisper of Dorian's soaked robes, and does not hear Cole. He hears the dull throb of waves grinding against the stony shore, and in his state of panic the sound changes and becomes sickeningly familiar.

They've just killed a band of slavers and freed two elves and a young Fereldan woman, found an Inquisition scout to lead them back to the nearest camp. The slavers, of course, are dead. Brutally so. But Mahon is not alright.

He sucks in a breath, desperate to steady himself. He hears harsh Tevene in the back of his mind, a memory echoing dully inside of him, making him wrap his coat tighter around himself, just like the arms tightening out from his mind. His breathing is shallow and his eyes are wide. The encounter has caught up with him, dug something festering out of his soul, spilling its fresh rot into his blood, making him shrink, making him scared. He is leaning against a thick oak tree.

Bull clears his throat. "Boss?"

Dorian makes a low noise of worry, almost a word, and Mahon wants to scream.

"I'm fine," he says instead, too fast and too loud. He can feel his heart hammering inside his chest. Small. A child's heart. He drags in a breath that betrays how much his body is trembling.

None of the party push or pressure him. The Bull wanders off a few yards to watch their backs, and Dorian hovers, understanding with freezing dread how his presence might push Mahon further into his state of panic. Cole is as rigid and wide-eyed as the Inquisitor. 

Mahon feels it coming before Cole even speaks, feels the cry growing inside of his own chest as his mind gives in; drops him into a dry reedy clearing on some other coast, in some other time, some other world. He can't breathe. Not here. He is small and winded because  _ he's been picked up at a full sprint by a hunter whose name he can't remember because- _

_ "Babae!" _

_ The hunter's arms trap his struggling little frame. They are running away, but he's slung over a shoulder, sees everything happening in the receding distance. The ambush. _

_ "Babae!" He is screaming, screaming, sobbing. _

_ An armoured fist connects with his father's jaw, and he sees a clot of something solid spill past his lips - a tooth or a piece of cheek - as he's subdued by the slavers. Six other men are chaining Sylana and Dimhnil and Osir and the hot summer air is filled with screams and snarls of defiance and with a curling foreign language that Mahon doesn't know. _

_ He's a child. His father had brought him to see the ocean but now he is being carried away from it to safety with a hunter's speed. His father is being beaten into the dry earth. Mahon cannot stop screaming. _

_ "Baba! Babae!" _

_ An arrow from the tree line finds its mark in the throat of his father's attacker, and the large elf kicks the gurgling shem off his body, writhes to his knees and locks eyes with his son before a boot catches the back of his head and his face meets the ground with a noise Mahon cannot hear but feels. He blinks as all the tension in his father’s body seeps out of his nose and mouth and into the dirt. _

_ The few hunters make it back to the tree line. Mahon is limp as a cloth doll in his rescuer's arms. They do not slow their pace until the forest is thick enough to dim the sunlight. _

_ "Babae, Babae, Babae, Babae-" _

_ "Ea atisha, da'len," a tear-wet, breathless kiss is pressed to his forehead. Ink black vallaslin. "Ea atisha. Ir abelas. Ir abelas." _

He is back at the Storm Coast. He is leaning against the same large oak, one tightly balled fist pressed against his lips, and his knees have given out beneath him. His teeth are clamped shut inside of his mouth. The Iron Bull, of all people, is rubbing warm circles into his back and breathing clear and slow. Without meaning to, Mahon mimics his breaths. His fist unclenches and he shuts his eyes tightly. Feels heavy teardrops fall down his cheeks. He offers Bull a curt nod. The Qunari's hand stills its motions but remains. Dorian has taken up the watch.

"Sorry," Mahon grits out, groans dizzily when Cole says it at the exact same time as him. Bull grunts.

"Pretty fucking creepy, how connected you two were for a minute there." He pats his back once, firmly, before standing. Cole's slippered feet appear in his downturned field of vision. "Wherever you were, it's good to have you back."

Mahon clears his throat, finds that it's still tight. "How much of that did you actually say, Cole?" Every word shakes, and he hates it.

"I'm sorry," he answers in his thin, pained voice, and Bull huffs.

"Not much." Bull shifts his gaze between Mahon and Dorian's attentive back. "Mostly elven. Some pictures. Not pretty ones."

Mahon eases himself into a sitting position, back pressed to the trunk of the oak. He is exhausted - feels slow and hollow. Catches Dorian’s gaze and holds it, unblinking, until Dorian’s features pull down with something akin to remorse and he has to look away. He has to look away or he’ll get angry.

“It’s so tightly wound,” Cole hiccoughs, and Mahon is startled by how human, how distressed Cole sounds. “Chained and chained and locked away and  _ screaming _ -”

“Not now. I’m not doing this now.” He interrupts, scrubbing his eyes. Pulling a sheet over the gaping wound. Letting the hollow feeling replace the bone-scraping fear. Standing up unsteadily, taking heavy steps away from Cole, clapping Bull on the arm, brusquely rubbing his nose as he marches past Dorian.  _ Not now. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! lemme know in the comments if you'd like to read more silly Dorian-related scenes or more...... struggling with childhood trauma scenes. or Hawke at skyhold scenes? :-O i've got ideas abounding because i uhhh LOVE COLE but a little focus never hurt anyone.
> 
> i'm rennybu on tumblr! come say hello!


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